Armond White is expelled from NYFCC after he called McQueen 'an embarrassing doorman and garbage man' during an awards-giving event last week.
- Jan 14, 2014
AceShowbiz - Armond White has been kicked out of New York Film Critics Circle after he allegedly heckled Steve McQueen's acceptance speech during the group's annual award ceremony. At the event which was held last week, McQueen took the stage to receive the Best Director award for his "12 Years a Slave".
CityArts writer White, who gave negative reviews about McQueen's film as he said that it should belong "to the torture porn genre with 'Hostel' and 'The Human Centipede'," reportedly yelled expletives at the director. "You're an embarrassing doorman and garbage man! F**k you! Kiss my a**," he said as quoted by a Variety reporter who seated near to him.
Following the incident, NYFCC has apologized to both McQueen and his film's distributor Fox Searchlight. "On behalf of the New York Film Critics Circle, I apologize sincerely for the crass bit of heckling Mr. McQueen encountered," the group's chairman Josh Rothkopf said in a statement. "I'm mortified to learn that this was from one of our own members. We are taking disciplinary action."
Meanwhile, White insisted that he never heckled McQueen. "I have been libelled by publications that recklessly quoted unnamed sources that made up what I said and to whom I was speaking," he said.
